BA Festival of Science Launch Concert: The Maths of Music
Sunday 3rd September 2006, John Innes Centre, Norwich

Mozart Overture from Die Zauberflote
Bartok Game of Pairs
JS Bach Chaconne
Joyce Koh Fors (world premiere)
Beethoven Fifth Symphony

Delegates and local people celebrated the start of the BA Festival with an intriguing, high-energy concert that explored the many links and influences between mathematics and music.

BBC Radio Three’s Christopher Cook presented an evening of music by Mozart, Bartok, Bach and Beethoven interspersed with dialogues between musicians and mathematicians including Professor Michael McIntyre of Cambridge University. The programme also included a new commission by the dynamic young composer, Joyce Koh.

Music and Genetics
Friday 24th June 2005, 7.30pm, John Innes Centre, Norwich
Tuesday 28th June 2005, 7.30pm, The Great Hall, King's College London

programme included Nicola Le Fanu Concertino for Chamber Orchestra (world premiere)

In association with the King's College London, the John Innes Centre and Cambridge Genetics Knowledge Park, the orchestra sought to explore the relationship between music and genetics through a variety of pieces by Haydn, Bach, Smolka, Janacek and Maconchy. The concert featured the world premiere of a new work by Nicola Le Fanu in which she expresses her musical interpretation of genetics based on discussions with scientists. Radio 3's Christopher Cook hosted the events in memory of the late Professor Maurice Wilkins, and the performances also included comment from Nicola Le Fanu and Sir Walter Bodmer, the noted geneticist.

Griller 'Octet' (world premiere); Schubert 'Octet'
Friday 29th April 2005, 1pm, The Assembly House, Norwich

The world premiere of Arnold Griller's Octet, coupled with Schubert's Octet, was performed by the Chamber Orchestra Anglia Ensemble.

'Das Lied von der Erde' Revisited - in Chinese (world premiere)
Saturday 14th August 2004, 6pm, The British Library (for the BBC Proms)

In eighth-century Tang Dynasty China, Li Bai, Qian Qi, Meng Haoran and Wang Wei all bemoaned their failure to win fame and fortune in their poetry while drowning their sorrows in drink. Some 1,200 years later, while Mahler was suffering family tragedy and ill health, he came across the German translation of these poems. They struck a chord and he composed Das Lied von der Erde.

This new chamber ensemble version is a resetting of the original Chinese Poems to Mahler’s music. Sung in Chinese.

Arrangement by Glen Cortese and Daniel Ng Mezzo
Soprano: Robynne Redmon
Tenor: Warren Mok

'An Invitation to Dance'
Sunday 1 August 2004, 3.00-5.00pm, Pye's Mill, Loddon, Norfolk

An open-air concert on a mobile bandstand by the river. Classical Music from Minuet to Tango. A Programme of many, mixed, classical dance pieces to join-in and dance to.

Access was by ferryboat from Loddon Staithe, or park in Church Plain and walk across the meadows

Anglia Television "Anglia Top Ten" broadcast
Transmitted 28th July 2004, 2.30pm, Anglia Television

A television programme featuring footage from a Chamber Orchestra Anglia education workshop on Beethoven's String Quartet op. 132.

'Das Lied von der Erde' (Song of the Earth)
June 2004, Wymondham Abbey

COA, with soloists Ruth Peel (mezzo soprano) and Justin Lavender (tenor), performed this wonderful work by Mahler in the 13th Century Abbey, as part of the Wymondham Music Festival, June 2004.

Mahler's friend sent him poetry with stunning imagery of Chinese gardens with lutes and wine goblets, autumn mists over a lake, pavilions of jade, young ladies gathering lotus flowers, reflections in pools, golden sunlight, a drunken man in spring and a farewell in cool shadows. Mahler, preoccupied with life, its passing and eternity, took the poetry and wrote this enchanting work, sung in German, which in turn dances, rejoices and reflects.

Wagner's 'Siegfried Idyll' complemented the Mahler, being an evocation of life and destiny with themes from the Ring, prompted by the birth of his son. An evening to remember!

Lunchtime recital and coCOA Orchestral Workshop
February 2004, The Assembly House and UEA School of Music, Norwich

This was one of a series of events in the International Concert & Workshop Series arranged by UEA. The lunchtime Ensemble performance included the Sextet from 'Cappricio' (Richard Strauss) and 'Souvenir de Florence' (Tchaikovsky).

Lunchtime recital
Thursday 20 March 2003, The Assembly House, Norwich

On Thursday 20 March 2003, leading members of COA performed Beethoven's Septet and Strauss's 'Till Eulenspiegel' (quintet version) to a full house at The Assembly House, Norwich as part of the UEA's lunchtime series.

Education day
The Forum, Norwich

We made many younger friends in October 2002, when we devised an afternoon's musical fun at the 'Forum', Norwich, with animateur Philip Sheppard. They tried instruments, danced a minuet, conducted the orchestra, had their drawings transformed into music, and heard some of our programme 'Jesting with Music'. The day was a great success.

Jesting With Art
October 2002, Norwich Playhouse

We enjoyed an evening of wit and music at the Playhouse Theatre, Norwich, in October 2002. The orchestra was joined by Griff Rhys Jones to entertain with a musical comedy based on Molière's 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme', to music by Richard Strauss. 'Moz-Art à la Haydn', Schnittke's playful collage, proved to be a work full of musical turns and surprises. Our other offering was Haydn's theatre symphony, 'Il distratto', the comical, beautiful and good humoured tale of an absent-man who can't even remember his own wedding day.

Fundraising concert at the Almeida Theatre, London
April 2002, The Almeida Theatre, London

In April 2002, Chamber Orchestra Anglia repeated their inaugural performance for an invited London audience, to raise funds and support, and we made many new friends. A major contribution to the accessibility of the music was the introduction to each work by the conductor, Sharon Andrea Choa. This popular approach is now an established feature of COA events.

Inaugural concert
Sunday 18th November 2001, The Forum, Norwich

The UK debut of Chamber Orchestra Anglia took place to public acclaim at The Forum in Norwich on November 18, 2001. The event marked the beginning of a new era in the music and cultural life of Norwich and East Anglia.

The concert was the very first musical event to take place in Norwich's new landmark building. The choice of venue reflected Chamber Orchestra Anglia's determination to present live music-making in an ambitious and highly approachable new light.

Hosted for the evening by the Classic FM presenter Jamie Crick, the event was supported by international sponsorship, the University of East Anglia and Bank of Ireland Business Finance.

The linking theme of the programme was the passing of time from noon until night, from Haydn's music written for performance in the afternoon, to Schoenberg's Night.

The concert opened with Haydn's Symphony No 7 'Le Midi' followed by Brahms's Serenade in D, Opus 11, the music having been specifically composed to serenade people in an informal and relaxed atmosphere. As evening fell over The Forum, a cycle of poems inspired by the music was read by its author, Kris Siefken.

As night descended, the orchestra presented Schoenberg's 'Verklärte Nacht' (Transfigured Night). Written for strings, the music followed a reading of the Richard Dehmel poem on which it is based, in a special recording by the esteemed actor, Alan Rickman.